


To Blazes

by sakuuya



Category: Battle for London in the Air (Roleplay)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Fire, Gen, I wrote this as a condition of my parole, Self-Loathing, better unliving through heroism, but it gets better, cyborg zombies, it's more wholesome if you ignore canon tho, wholesome January
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-25
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-17 21:01:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28980777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakuuya/pseuds/sakuuya
Summary: Shortly after his rescue from Dr. Kern’s lab, Oscar learns that even though he isn't a normal human any more, his existence still has value.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 4





	To Blazes

The problem was that Rebecca and Tristan were being so _nice_ about everything. Oscar had never had anyone trying to dote on him like this. Before he died, he’d always been in the protector role, looking after other people. His friends trying to protect him instead—especially Rebecca, whom he’d died failing to guard—put him on the wrong foot.

He wasn’t sure how he wanted them to act around him. Their gentle voices and concerned expressions made him want to yell and shake them sometimes, but the way everyone else at the Ε-Ι base avoided catching his eye was no better. And he doubted if he’d feel happier if Rebecca and Tristan looked at him like he was a freak. It wasn’t as though he could ever forget that fact, anyway. Just thinking about his current state would be enough to make his skin crawl, if it still did that.

Oscar had only been reanimated and cognizant for a couple days when he decided he had to get out of the base. Maybe being around strangers who didn’t know what was wrong with him would help him feel normal.

As soon as he stepped out into the soft daylight of the crossing, Oscar realized that he’d made a mistake. He felt so _exposed_ up here, like everyone on the whole crossing had suddenly turned round to stare at him. That wasn’t true, of course. Even the soldiers stationed on practically every corner paid him little mind.

Still, he pulled the collar of his coat higher around his face as he hurried along, like he was trying to shield himself from the early-fall wind. Now that he was outside, he was going to stay out here until he started feeling at least a little like a normal man, dammit.

That rationale lasted until he was deep into Ι, near the crossing with Η. What the _hell_ was he doing out here, pretending that the chilly wind affected him, that he deserved to walk among regular people? Better to re-inter himself back at the base and try to learn to live with Tristan and Rebecca’s stifling care. He didn’t need to breathe anyway.

Oscar wended his way back to Ε-Ι crossing by a different route than he’d taken away from it. He didn’t want anyone remembering his face. Though he had, as far as he knew, perfect recall of his life, he might have overestimated how well he knew the layout of this part of LITA. Getting lost wasn’t a big deal, really, but it was frustrating when all he wanted to do was burrow back into the base he’d been calling home since he woke up in that lab.

He heard a commotion nearby and tried to go the other way, but the tangle of streets turned him around until he was face-to-face with a crowd surrounding a burning house. A freestanding one, thank God, the kind of slightly shabby old place that often served as student housing these days. Now fire and smoke belched out of its windows. There were a couple of bucket chains going, but a lot of the crowd was just gawking, and the fire brigade hadn’t shown up yet. Oscar swore he could hear screaming from somewhere inside.

Propelled by instinct, Oscar raced into the burning building without even stopping to consider the danger he might be putting himself in.

The front hall was thick with smoke, but Oscar didn’t have to breathe, and his unliving eyes didn’t sting, though the blasted stuff made it hard to see where he was going. He stopped trying, just closed his eyes and strained his ears, attempting to isolate that screaming over the roaring crackle of the flames.

 _Upstairs_. Oscar dropped to his hands and knees, where the visibility was a little better, and crawled up the staircase to the house’s second floor. The first door he threw open revealed a room aflame but devoid of humans. Oscar could feel the heat in his metal bones, but it wasn’t enough to melt them, so it registered only distantly. He closed the door. There was a young woman in the second room, trying to grab papers off a desk although, from the sound of her coughing, she could barely breathe. 

“Miss, you need to come with me!” Oscar yelled, then yanked her down to the ground without waiting for a reply. The papers in her arms scattered, and she resisted Oscar’s efforts to hurry her along until he helped her gather them. Then, finally, she let him shepherd her downstairs and out the front door.

Once they were safely away from the burning house, Oscar asked, “Is anyone else inside?” He knew he didn’t sound smoke-ravaged, or even winded, but he didn’t have time to worry about that. 

“I think Buster’s still in his room,” the young lady replied through another coughing fit. “Second floor, last door on the right!”

Oscar nodded and ran back into the inferno, despite the protests from the firemen now working to douse the flames. They weren’t in possession of all the facts.

This time, when Oscar started crawling up the stairs, he heard a horrible cracking sound above him and a beam fell on top of him. If he had been a living man, it would have broken his back, but Oscar just rolled it off, then clambered over it and up the stairs. The last door on the right was locked, but it buckled easily enough when Oscar rammed it with his shoulder. Through the thick smoke, he could just make out a figure lying on the bed.

He feared he was too late, but when he crawled up close, he could see that the man on the bed—Buster, presumably—was still breathing, coughing a little in the smoke. Oscar didn’t bother formally waking Buster up, just stood and flung the young man over his shoulder. Buster stirred then, yelping and coughing, but Oscar didn’t pay him any mind. Being carried might not be comfortable or dignified, but it was a damn sight better than choking to death on smoke.

The beam that had fallen on Oscar on the way up was aflame as he descended the stairs. He shifted his grip on Buster and leapt over it, barely able to catch himself against the far wall. No ordinary man would have been able to make that jump. But Oscar didn’t dwell on it as he carried Buster out the door. He laid the young man in the gutter, where the woman he’d rescued before hurried over to them. Buster was holding his head in his hands, apparently unable to process what was happening.

“Is that everyone?” Oscar asked the young woman, who seemed to have a better grip on things. She nodded as she knelt down next to Buster.

“I think so! I can’t thank you enough, Mr…”

He didn’t answer her, suddenly aware of how he’d exposed himself. City firemen were coming toward them too, likely to check on the survivors, but maybe also to question the man who’d ran into the fire and was no worse for wear, save for some singed clothing.

Oscar fled.

The one positive of a house fire, he supposed, was that it occupied people’s attention. No one chased after him, though it took him a fair few blocks to realize that. Even then, the only reason he didn’t keep running until he was back at Ε-Ι crossing was because he didn’t want to arouse suspicion. 

He did make it back soon enough, though, and once he was safely inside the resistance base, he took stock of himself. His favorite blue coat was singed and torn and smoke-stained, probably unsalvageable, and his trousers were in much the same condition. Otherwise, though, he felt perfectly fine, no worse for wear than he had since he’d come back to life. 

Oscar looked down at his cold hands and, for the first time, smiled at them. If he had been a living man, there was no way he would have been able to save Buster and his housemate without dying himself. Perhaps being brought back from the dead was a blessing after all.


End file.
